TRASHFUTURE - Enter the Railway Ronin feat. Gareth Dennis

Episode Date: July 10, 2023

We’re joined by friend of the show Gareth Dennis (@garethdennis) to discuss newly unveiled plans to close every ticket counter at every train station in England. Nothing else is going to be improved, of course, but we’ve envisioned some potential cost-cutting efficiencies: turning station guides into large human-sized braille dots, cutting the civil service down to just one guy that everyone gets mad at, and much more. Check out Rail Natter here! https://www.youtube.com/c/GarethDennisTV If you want access to our Patreon bonus episodes, early releases of free episodes, and powerful Discord server, sign up here: https://www.patreon.com/trashfuture *LIVE SHOW ALERT* We're going to be recording a live podcast in London on July 26! Get tickets here: https://bigbellycomedy.club/event/trashfuture-live-in-london/ *STREAM ALERT* Check out our Twitch stream, which airs 9-11 pm UK time every Monday and Thursday, at the following link: https://www.twitch.tv/trashfuturepodcast *WEB DESIGN ALERT* Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/ *MILO ALERT* Check out Milo’s upcoming live shows here: https://www.miloedwards.co.uk/live-shows and check out a recording of Milo’s special PINDOS available on YouTube here! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRI7uwTPJtg Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and Alice (@AliceAvizandum)

Yeah, you just you just love to talk very loud Yeah, you just love to talk very loud The booming voice yeah, let's get into it Very erotic Very erotic Okay, let's get into it. Faea Rottich. Zerotich. Zerotich. Zerotich. How loud you talk.

Talking Zer loud in the box. I can be heard from. Just over the sounds of squelching. I mean pussy. All I can hear is arsh noise. Hello everybody. Tello everybody. I Moist. Hello, everybody. Oscar Moist.

Oh, Jesus Christ. I'm sorry to everybody you turned in to turn dim. Nope, tuned in to this episode to listen to some sensible discussion of what's happening with trend. Now, the list is turn themselves in at the start of every episode. Turning up to reporting to podcast prison. Yeah, it is my pleasure to once again introduce one of our most requested and frequently returned guests.

It's Rayl Natter's, Gareth Dennis joining the rest of the gang. Gareth, how's it going? I'm all right. Yeah, I'm not dead too badly. I mean, that's, no, actually, I'm going to correct myself on that. I'm really angry. I'm going to smash my head against the table. Everything's gang worse and worse, but then that's true of everything in Britain right now. So I going to smash my head against the table. Everything's getting worse and worse.

But that's true of everything in Britain right now. So I thank to play in too much. Yeah, we're going to be talking after we do a few of the other sort of front matter because I have some do'sies of old friends to revisit. After you do some of that, about the continuing dismantling of Britain's rail network as a kind of excellent way in to think about the state, the relationship between the state and people.

And I even think it's worth comparing to some of what Tony Blair has written about the future of the NHS because there are actually quite a few parallels in their different visions. It's just that in some ways the degeneration of the rail system is like more visible. It's more visible in made of stuff. You can see it and touch it and you can see the ticket man go away. There is one key similarity between the rail system and the NHS in that neither of them will be functioning. You wouldn't be able to use either. But before we get into that, I just want to raise a breaking news item.

Okay. It appears as though the, the woke Marxist communist federation of Britain is once again turning against its veterans. Right. No one consulted me on this. And it's, and it's, it's charity campaigners as the Sir Tom foundation has in some major Tom has had their essential their business critical spa pulled down that was built in his daughter's garden. No, not the spa.

Why did she build a corner shop in her own garden? She just really wanted to be able to buy poppers and cheap pastries. Look, just in a moment's walk. I'm quoting from Metro newspaper here, the family of Sir Captain Tom Moore have been accused of using a charity set up in the late veteran's name to build a spa and pool complex in their garden. Absolutely incredible. Well, they're all in their garden. Absolutely incredible. Well, you know, it's, it's, it's, they're, they're, they're a family all about the garden. They get their, they're all relative

to walk around in the garden. Now, they're building a spine in the garden. Yeah. And no thing, the next generation can like swim laps of the garden to raise money for the end of the season. Yeah. The, the use of the word complex really makes it sound like they've built like a council leisure center in there, rather than just a pool under sauna or whatever. Like they're built just like a full on, like, you know, it's got a gym in there. It's got like, it's got a nursery school. It is a 50, 50 foot by 20 foot building. So there are multiple rooms inside this home, relatively. So they want to become Russian oligarchs.

They want to get murdered with a crossbow. This is what they're looking for. They want to become Russian oligarchs, but like on a Britain budget. And so they're perfect. Yeah, perfect. So they're doing Russian oligarch shit in what is reported to be like a just north of a million-pound home.

Okay, yeah, fine. They miss a trick by not calling it the Captain Tom Onsen. The Captain Tom Sen. Yeah. They said that the space was urgently required for presentations and memorabilia. And the thing is, yeah, awarding like swimming certificates and stuff and Captain Tom's memory, the thing is like we were legally prevented from calling this, but I want you all to know that we kind of did privately. Everyone has agreeing with

me in DMs, but like, no, we fully did say to ourselves, as I'm sure many of you did, looking at the Captain Tom Foundation, this seems like the sort of foundation that might be about to spend a lot of money on a commemorative combination spa on-sen swimming pool. Well, it was it was a museum pool and sauna. Like the sauna was full of memory. You know, they had the Zimmer frame in there. Like don't touch it because it's really fucking hot. Yeah.

Like don't you will burn your skin will graft to the frame of the Zimmer. It is the world's first soda for patriotic heterosexual. That's true. That is the stones's first soda for patriotic heterosexual. That's true. That is true. The stones in the sauna, the shape of a poppy. Just, you know, something to do. Yeah, you can go there and you can suck the dicks of our remaining World War II veterans. Oh. They're in there, relaxing. It's a sort of like a retirement community. Yeah. You can show the Germans what for. That's right at a time. Yeah.

Look, this is, and the fact that the Woke Marxist charity commission that clearly wants to do Britain down is preventing the, like, because they clearly hate Britain, and they, like, don't love that someone was selfless, right? Because they want everyone to be selfless in their way, right? Oh, we hate the museum pool.

Is it a crime to make your elderly dad do 10,000 pushups an hour in order to fund the NHS? Make him into a national hero, get a free holiday with him to Barbados where he catches the novel coronavirus and dies. Use his likeness to form a charity foundation that does no distinguishable charity, but then buys you a port. Is that a crime? And genuinely, I don't think it should. Yeah. It isn't a crime. Don't love me up and throw away the key. Is it a crime to grind to dream? To go to the locker center?

The locker center. The locker center. The locker center. The locker center. The locker center. The locker center. Yeah. Is it a crime to go to the captain Tom Museum? Lock me up in the veterans' gaze, owner, and throw away the key. Yeah, is it a crime to go to the Captain Tom Museum and, yeah, they kind of feel, be made, pretend to feel traumatized by all the world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, world, because that is what the super true. Having a solemn one. Yeah. You know what else? You tell you say one other thing though,

is like everyone's talking about preventative medicine and then the people actually trying to save the NHS build a relaxing sauna so they don't get heart attacks and they're saving the NHS from even more spending and now everyone's mad about it. I, it's really hypocritical. The thing that's really funny about this too is aside from everything else we've just discussed,

that they built the spa on certain complex with retrospective planning permission, which is, I love this, it's one of the few regulatory things that Britain that I think we do well, is a kind of hubris trap for a mid-class people, which is best documented in my favorite TV show, Grand Designs, where we go, yeah, okay, you can build something, and then after you've built it,

you can ask us whether it's allowed to be built. And if we say no, you have to knock it back down again. And that's what they've done. I love photos of the knocking down bit, particularly when it ends up in the tabloids, and there's just some picture of some guy in jeans and a blazer pointing angrily at his house with them as a digger. Like it's like on one side, it's a farm shed, and on the other side, it's like a

mansion to get around the planning for it. And there's just a digger, a JCB with a council worker kind of sat in it. I just beautiful. I love that. The neighbors are having a great time with this. This is every British neighbor's dream. Getting to knock down your neighbor's fucking spa complex. This is what Starmer's gonna do. It's gonna give everyone the ability to drive the JCB

through their neighbor's house. If they're using it on two. Yeah, the one from the get Brexit done from this. The rule is gonna be that it's like the fence is that you can drive through your neighbor's house on the right, but they can also drive... Your neighbor on the left can drive through you every house in Britain knocked out housing crisis If you housing dominoes is just this the string of demolitions work. It's work The show they will be sad to hear this news because of course they will be very familiar with the sailors gay sauna in Lime House

I think the Captain Memorial Tom Major Tom's foundations attempts to build the Royal Navy sailors' gaze-owner should have been met with more respect for our veterans. Maybe they made it look a bit nicer. It looked like fucking Osama Bin Laden's house. Yeah, they gave it. It was really rich. It had Osama Bin Laden's body. Yeah, they got it. They should have had it. Sam have been Laden in there. It was really rich there. It should have had a Salvin Laden's body at the bottom of the pool. You just, like, had a house to sleep.

The council black heart helicopter collapsing due to a, like, rotor effect onto the wall of the captain. What? I mean, it's going to have a cross section of the building. And underneath the swimming pool, the compartment with the Salvin Laden's body just sitting in. All right, we know he was buried at sea, but we're moving on.

I want to revisit some old crap. Under a swimming pool, is it sea, surely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I mean, he was buried at sea in his swimming pool, can count. In his lamic law, technically. I don't know. Slowly pushing the totally dead corpse

of some of them, nothing. Oh, yeah, so the swimming pool. They built the captain's own memorial pool's the best thing. Oh yeah, it's the swimming bowl. That's the cat team, Tom Memorial Pool, and the whole thing faces mecca. This is conspiracy. All right, all right, all right. We're revisiting some old friends. These are two soft-backed friends,

both of which have had some difficulties. We talked a couple of years ago, actually. I looked in my own archives to be sure we did. There was a social media app called IRL. It was trying to be like WhatsApp with a calendar function Awesome I'm sold Yeah, cuz your phone isn't just WhatsApp with the calendar function

Yeah, no, no one has ever combined WhatsApp with looking at the calendar on their phone. That's too crazy This probably doesn't go down. It doesn't go side to side Now this was a messaging app that reached a $1.2 billion valuation after SoftBank put $170 million into it. It was the Vision Fund, too, the one with the Kazakhstan. And then it described itself as the leading group messaging social network that brings people together through events and shared experiences. Our primary goal at IRL has always been to create

authentic organic communities to help users spend more time with their friends in the real world and boost their overall happiness. Buh! Claiming. Claiming that they had 20 million monthly active users who chatted about shared interest in plan real world events together. A supposed to-

A certain judgment? 20 million users not, you know? Quite a few. I'm sure all of them are real. Well, we've been planning real world events, like 9-11. So, well, what will happen is that the board of directors recently concluded that 95% of those users were bots and the company is now worthless. Oh, no.

Oh, no. You could have first seen it. Yeah, that's what happens. Like, you turn, it's like we're seeing now the last vestiges of some of those season three companies kind of collide with reality a little bit. I was a little bit suspicious when there was so many girls from Japan saying that they just arrived in my sassy and we're looking for a guy to show them around and they were

really impressed by my tweets. Oh wow, your tweets are that impressive. Do you have a lucky credit card number? All these real women are always messaging me on Twitter to say they're interested in all that is unknown to them, including the gay sonar at the capital memorial complex. So turns out, IRL, that thing we said was incredibly stupid and would never work, turns out it is incredibly stupid

and didn't work. Schoolboards. So once again, yeah. this is rapidly becoming the scoreboard round. Yeah. Although, again, don't look at that one thing we missed. Look at the rest of the things we nailed. We've been nailing it more than missing it ever since 2019. I mean, I had the tweet that was like our COVID's probably not going to be anything. So I'm like, you know, X number of startups we've got right for two. I wanted to do another, another soft bag startup as well. Now, this one is one I refer to a lot because it's such a fun idea. But I talk about view all the time as an example of a dumb company.

It's the company that makes smart windows that know if it's raining, but also like that auto tint to save energy allegedly. It's a classic. Yeah, so you can see it. 2023. Yeah, yeah, well, so Vue has, let's say a, there are former chief financial officer is being, let's say he's in a spot

of bother. Oh, no. Did he build an old set in the wrong place? Yeah, it wasn't facing mecca, which apparently it happened. The work must look messy. Yeah. Well, yeah, because he had sat on his side and buried in the pool. Oh, so basically, view has, I had disclosed a number of liabilities related to like

manufacturing replacement windows because let's say some of the windows they made were defective. It turns out that they were supposed to disclose 22 to 25 million of those liabilities. Instead, should have disclosed up to 53 million of those liabilities, leading to let's say some action How hard is it to make a window? Well, how hard is it to make a better window? I guess you could ask very apparently I presume that's not that's not that's not here their share price though. They're still a robust company trading Real products for their bags by soft banks, so they must be soft banks in soft banks in like aggressive mode now So surely it's going to,

well, wouldn't you know it? View, because view, well, the thing is, right? Soft bank actually took a view and said, this is such a good company. We want to share it with you, the general public. And so took it public via SPAC. You remember SPACs? Yeah, I love them. Special tax basically like, we love them.

Yeah. By the way, it's like, I hate knowing all that stuff about this stuff I'm going to invest in. I'd rather buy a fun lottery ticket. Yeah, you can have stock in BP or whatever, or you can have the mystery balls. Precisely. Wouldn't you know it? Views share a price.

Actually, I don't think any of you have seen this. They're down since the SPAC merger. How far do you think they're down, starting with our guest? Uh, like 50% down, right? Okay. All right, who's saying, how far down are they? I'm going to go for 85. Okay, Milo.

Is it 90? Alice. I Milo. Is it $90? Alice. I think Garith has it right. I think it's the kind of thing that like knocks half the value off the company that the thing doesn't work. That's a minor thing, you know? Closes without going over as Milo, it's $99. Yeah, it's 1% being last is very funny.

The market's self-corrects, I guess. That's one of the times. They were like, it's still worth something. I've got a bunch of like pens and paper and stuff in there. And we can buy a little bit. It still looks winter. It's not just this one event that knocked it all down, right? But this obviously isn't very good in shows

that their product might be a little bit maybe not so great. However, the shares are now worth 12.8 cents down from 10, because all spacks, if you remember, were 10. That's 12.8 cents market cap. Each individual share is worth a tiny fraction. Yeah. So, yeah, another company that we said was stupid. And unfortunately, like that loss, like, Softbank got out. Softbank was bailed out by the SPAC company,

which was then bailed out by Roob's, essentially. Oh, sorry. No consequences other than the fact that you have to look out of a regular boring window to see whether it's raining or not. A stupid window. Since Vee collapse, my view subscription to my windows is no longer valid, and they're just black screen. It's completely dark in my office.

I wonder if remember cooler screens. Oh, yeah. I wonder if that would happen if you could brick cooler screens if like the company goes out of business and then you can't see in the freezer. I don't know which monster energies I have. I have to open the damn thing. Or is it like a Tony's general? Is it monster's energy?

Yeah. Right in. Don't write it. One last bit of front batter I want to discuss before he move on, which is of course, I need a little bit of a little bit of Starmer updates because he's the gift that keeps on giving unless you want to model it about Starved update, the correct amount done in moderation. He's the gift that keeps on giving if you like to see a sort of puffy, weirdo acting strange on TV.

Yeah. And he was so funny. He gave a speech about giving good speeches that both was not a good speech and was then interrupted as a speech. I think the finalist, it wasn't interrupted. It was aggressively protested and shouted down. It was very aggressively response from those

two polite kids. Yeah, the contrast of how he described it till I actually happened, which is these two kids going, um, um, um, Mr. Starmie, you didn't respond to our email about the green you deal. Well, um, Mr. Stormy, you didn't respond to our email about the green you deal. They say, well, well, well, anyway, it's, it's, it's, it's just, you see us,

we afterwards, but did you see, do you guys see us tweet that we did? We did. I'll say it's, he said, I will not be, I and the working people of this country will not be shouted down. Now it takes an inference, but it does take some active inference to connect that to the goings-on of the school like I wouldn't be surprised if you know this is a guy who schedules all of his all of his tweets or has someone do it seven days in advance but you gotta admit it's a bit coincidental and even then the fact that he is so clearly fucking rattled well being asked why his cut all climate investment pledge is the same as the Tories cut all climate investment pledge

It's just labor is cutting 28 billion of promised money and the Tories are only cutting 13 billion of promised money And then we'll sort of solve the climate change stuff later You know, where the labor number is higher. Yeah, so that's better. Yeah. Yeah Just why he whenever he goes out in, like he always gets accosted because people are inherent, and a funnily if he's not all just trots who are inherently disappointed in him, just a lot of people,

he just inherently disappointed in him. And it seems to happen all the time, like his spads are just useless at scurrying away from people. And he always seems to just look utterly personally insulted by it. Like it does not weather this stuff well. He's, he's gonna be so good at it. When he's like in an election.

Sort of a disantist mood. You know, the kind of like affrontedness and the weirdness. Oh my God, we're gonna get a disantist by default. Soon acts gonna be like. Kees Stammer. Meet, meet Boll Stammer. Kees Stammer.

Kees. Kees. Kees Stenardo. He can't even. Stun armor Keyes canado So you do sound like a three-foot man when you do when you do Rishi whenever you imagine the voice of Rishi tonight you've got to imagine him like tugging at your skirts and looking up at you It's very important that we get the economy right. Yeah, that's actually, I like how you psychologically go into your impressions.

It's really fun. You've gotta do it. It's about the whole inhabiting the bee. It's kind of Richard IAR, right? It's quite close. It's quite close. It is tactically close. Yeah, that's just...

It's IAR, but a bit more Lisby. This is a momenta occasion. So, I want to go back to this speech, where he is showing a sense of personal affrontedness at being challenged. It's an affront that says, at least I promised you more before taking all of it away. Do the fiscal rules. And again, it boggles them, we've talked about this, right? How investment, especially in energy,

especially in renewable energy, and especially in transport infrastructure, which we'll talk about in a sec, is deflationary. That is all deflationary. Especially for the Danish stay energy company. It's like, no, no, no, no. we have to just keep on stripping bits out of this thing until it sort of magically fixes itself. It's so dispiriting because we're, I know we're going to get into this momentarily, but

this, we've seen this pattern in transport in railways particularly where the Tories do the huge violent thing or rather they set the pieces on the board. So like back in the day with the reshaping report, the famous speech and report, the Tories do the huge violent thing, or rather they set the pieces on the board. So like, back in the day with the reshaping report, the famous speech and report, the Tories delivered it, but actually it was a labor who did all the cuts and stuff. They didn't reverse it, they just delivered it. Prioritization, 1997, the act was placed, the stuff happened, labor could have reversed it,

but they didn't. And we're seeing enormous cuts now in the run-up to a general election, a load of, as we get into, a load of political capital being burned by the Tories, and they don't care because they know that Labour will just deliver it. I'd love them not to, but the precedent is set by Labour. It's so disparaging. And as you know, exactly as you say, everything that Starmer has said just lines us up for an enormous disappointment. Ah, particularly.

Lately, the splitical strategy is like the Marshall Mathers Papa Doc rap battle strategy where he's just like we're gonna cut the other chest we're gonna cut green dude Dale Spendak we're gonna cut the railways now tell him something you're gonna cut that I haven't already thought Yeah, and I mean, it's so it's of course, it's no surprise, right? That this is someone we, I don't think can be trusted to, for example, reverse what is has already happened to the railways under the Tories and the rest of it as well. And what they've just now, well, when I say they've just announced, it's a little bit, it's a little bit confusing, but let's go into our train section.

I'm shoveling the call, I'm putting on my little hat, we're talking trains. Does that mean we get to end on pudding? Does that mean we get to end the episode on pudding? I'm shocked about that. We may, we may. Well, it's the now way to talk about the gear, Stelma. Yeah, all put in here. That's right.

So, can you tell me just a little bit about? He's putting with his fingers. Can you just tell me, please, what is the major transformation that has happened in British rail infrastructure in the last couple of days? And who is behind it? Because everyone seems to be saying someone else is behind the decision. Yeah, so, yeah, I've been on, what, I think five times previously talking about

various shenanigans and nonsense on our railways. So we're in a post-Cobal, we're in an environment where the railways, the general accepted cross-party consensus of railways are good actually has been completely dis- can completely kind of that bubble is burst. And we've just seen the railways being degraded and degraded.

And the thing that was announced literally yesterday, in fact, but it's been teased. The unions were saying, well, this is a problem. Mick Lynch was talking about this a year, last year, it's been teased and leaked. And now we've got the actual formal news yesterday of almost all ticket offices in stations across England. So not Wales, not Scotland, just England

are going to be closed. And it's not just small ones. We're talking London, Houston. We're talking Glasgow Central. We're talking absolutely enormous. Yeah, Glasgow Central, weirdly because of Amity, which is an English train operating company, Glasgow in Scotland, but that ticket office will close even though it's in Scotland. I know that's a bit weird. Right in this strange. Yeah, we're nicking your ticket office out. So we're seeing a huge number of ticket offices, hundreds and hundreds of ticket offices closing and the plan for these, so it's not going to happen overnight, but the plan is basically government has, so kind of addressing your last point, this has come from government.

So we're seeing the legal process, this is a bit beachingy actually because this is way back referring to actually kind of echoes of the laws from the 1960s. There is a quite complicated legal process to do this, to actually close take offices. It's a bit like closing a railway or a closing railway station. You have to go through a statutory process and the train operating, legally the train operating companies or what's left of them, they're basically run as contract companies now, they have to coordinate that process. But they're not the ones who made the decision. The decision has come, you know, DFT have pushed this, they're pushing it under there, and I'm using enormous rabbit ears here, modernization program, to make the railway more lean and more efficient,

which obviously is a bollocks. So that's what's being proposed. Huge closure of ticket offices across the country. Is there a minor question here? What about the people who need those? Oh, golly, I'm sure, I mean, yeah, we'll get into it. But this, Val, very briefly summarized before, before, kind of, Riley brings, kind of,

continues to weave the yarn. But basically, this is going to hit accessibility massively. So we have a railway system that is deeply inaccessible. So whether that's in terms of people who are partially side or blind, the ticket machines have a flat screen and absolutely nothing tactile about them. So there is how do those people buy a ticket? In terms of accessibility of getting on trains,

big gaps between the platform and the train, in terms of actually getting into the platform itself, you know, no lifts in most stations. There's a huge gap in accessibility, so most people can't get on trains, so they need help. And the consistent feedback from disabled travelers is, we like to know that there is a person in a ticket office that we know we can go to. I don't want to struggle going along that massive ramp to find someone on the platform in a crowded station to try and get help.

I know that if there's a ticket office, I can get help there. But also it's like the fact that the railway has lots of passengers who don't get our incredibly complicated ticketing system. So if we're getting advice, the ticket office is incredibly useful. And there are loads of types of ticket you have to buy

in a station as well that you can't get online, like rovers and all sorts of things that people use, tourist use, people who are critically and crucially in this place into so much that you talk about rallying other situations, particularly when you think the other day about supermarkets and about the fact that everything is getting more expensive. So everything's like the fancy box of cookies, you can't just get a crap box of Tescovalue cookies anymore. Well, this is true in the railways as well. So like they're excluding people from those cheaper fares. The fares that people who have not a lot of money can use to travel around, those often you can only, like, assert your situation where you can often buy those only in booking offices. And essentially, by getting rid of booking offices, those numbers of tickets will decrease,

so they'll be a justification just getting rid of those tickets. So it's all playing into these problems of accessibility, of the advice, and of course the fact that it's a massive ruse to just Thanos tens of thousands of staff across the railing, a more than half of staff in certain railing companies will just be Thanos' staff to this, would just be sacked. And it's hopeless. It's worth saying as well, right? Like this is, that all of what we're talking about is the removal that the plan is, ostensibly, is to remove the ticket office, right?

To allow people to only buy tickets based on interfacing with some kind of electronic device, whether it's your phone, a machine, or whatever. And then what they say is, well, yeah, 85% of tickets are sold that way, to which I say, well, howling on, isn't 15% of your revenue sold that way to which I say well hang on isn't 15% of your revenue is still quite a bit of revenue hundreds of millions of pounds a year.

One in nine tickets are sold in a booking office in a station. That's a small number isn't it? The British government likes to occasionally return to the Jenga Tower of the British Railway that collapsed so long ago a game of monopoly is taking place around it. And just pick up a bunch more of the blocks and just throw them into a wood shipper. And just be like, it's innovation you can't. Don't you like, isn't it better now? Don't you like it now that there's less? Why would you need to buy a ticket?

What for? To talk to a bloke. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And even then, right? To go to the gay sauna, the veteran sauna. So let's bring that one step further, right?

Let's follow the government's logic here. Because you could say, all right, well, look, we're going to put a person who wanders around the station, uh, helping people, we're just going to take them out of the take it away, right? We're going to have the real way, Ronin, who wanders masterless around the state, the railway coast, there's going to be a ghost hunt, a helpful ghost will hunt the railway station. The railway used to be run on more of a show gun at basis, but now I'm bound by nothing

more than a code of honor. Well, you could have been banished to the platform to build a better, no, that's not clear. But it's basically how the Japanese like train system does work. More on that, some other time. But let's, but let's keep following government's logic here, right? It's because it is, it's, let's say that it is reasonable to close that channel and encourage people onto other channels, you would need to, for example, retool all of the ticket machines to make them accessible to partially cited people by like making, like making Braille happen for them.

You would need to start enabling people to get those other kinds of tickets right away. You would need to not actually fire people, just change their drop description to be like station attendant rather than ticket sales. Well, you'd need railway asmire. Yeah, you would, if anything, this is, it's, you can see like, anytime someone says, oh, you're just, you're just afraid of, of technology or progress going. Yeah, and you get this within, this is happening with an industry. So actually, this has been more than any other modernization, kind of rabbit ears stuff that's happened in the last couple years.

This is the thing that I think has been, has been felt, it's really obvious the industry doesn't want this. Unlike a few of the other things where it was like, oh, well, you know, it's the unions are pushing back. And this is just how it is. This has not been met like that. Even people quite far out the chain have responded with, well, the office of Rail and Road,

which is ostensibly the regulator, and yes, they've absolutely regulatory capture, and they have absolute no teeth. But they were doing passive-aggressive tweeting of statistics today about how many travelers use assistance stations. So even like, you're getting this sort of weird passive-aggressive tweeting going on from organizations,

they're like, this is a shit idea, oh my god. But yeah, this is absolutely, absolutely. Soap, our innovation plan is being sub-tweeted. So yeah, a lot of the language is being used is like, oh, we're taking the staff in behind glass and putting them in front of glass, like we're putting them out, we're taking them out from the glass box and they're going to, the passengers are going to see them. But kind of, yeah, you're alluding to the fact that what that means is a skilled staff person who's a unionized employee of the railway, it's going to be swapped out for someone on a zero or low-hours contract who is an employee of mighty, or like G4S or something,

or CIRCO, and there's nothing to do with the actual railways. They've done an hour and a half online course on what a railway ticket is. And they've been told that they've been pushed onto the concourse and told to just like get amongst it, which is very funny Accessibility points of view because unless they're going up and like soliciting people if you can't see well for instance Unless you just hook a little thing to the back of the high-vis that just occasionally in a monotone just says stuff or whatever There's no like a high-vis braille. They don't make's bump that big. Yeah, you're just a gigantic bump like a sea. Yeah. Yeah. Just walking headfirst into a massive.

Is that right? People actually he actually blinded someone who walked into him. Yeah. Yeah. Just a whole conducting staff that sticks out of their hat adjacent to the electrified overhead wires. That's that's how that one in the way are. Because you can sort of see who they imagine is the only person they want using the railways from a plan like this. The only person they want using the railways is a man between the ages of 18 and 60 who is familiar with the area who's probably going to work. Yeah, that's all.

And who is not going to be too distressed by any sort of cancellations or anything like that, because they somehow have a car in every car park along the way. Like, this is the thing about rail. I've got into this mindset one time. I understood this Tory mindset because once I splashed out, I invested your podcast money listeners in a first class ticket. I apologize.

Who's she put me up against the wall? I posted a photo of a dog on the train and someone immediately went, is that the first class carpet you piece of shit? And I went, oh god. I was in your own style, get it? Yeah, I know. So they're gooning your ass in the Welsh quote tweet.

Yeah, so I got this first class ticket because I thought it was gonna be nice. And I was amongst people who were only traveling by train, not as a particular conveyance, but because they wanted to get somewhere in a leisurely way because they wanted to get pissed in a like, respectable, up and middle class way. That's the thing. That's the sole vision of anyone who travels by train commuting. No, visiting anything.

No, tourism. No, visiting anything. No tourism. No, it's like I want to I want to go to like London from Edinburgh or vice versa and I want to have a few glasses of wine on the way in a chain bar Tori doners chain bar to drink in there until your sozzled stainer Tori doners chain hotel and then go back on the train again. Another Dubon A. Charles, you want to be at least a bit half cat before we get into the Captain Tom Memorial Corner. I tell you, are some of those old men's cocks and not exactly high genie? It's like Preston for this, Riley, because like the gate line staff, so the ticket barriers that we see at some stations, quite a lot of them are no longer part of the, quite a lot of them are now outsourced,

low skilled, low salary, well not salary, they're on lower zero hours contracts. So this is already happening. So when we're getting the, governments going, the rail delivery group, which is this made up body that sort of represents the train operating companies back in the day when the train operating companies

weren't just a briefly outsourced contract or organization. They're going, oh no, there's going to be skilled staff and we're not going to be just swapping them out and sacking everyone. It's like, no, no, you have, you've done this already. You've done this, you've brought in the low skilled worker who is on a precarious contract, doesn't have the knowledge, doesn't have the understanding of what accessibility

needs are, which are quite complicated on a railway because everyone can use them. And so the trans sector society is quite complex. You have to have a good understanding of different abilities that a one hour online course that you were delivered by, like mighty, is it's not gonna cut it. And probably also worth noting that even if they are sort of,

like trained, or even if they are kind of, like very good at their jobs, like the fact that this, this is this is not even a job that's been created as a job that exists because infrastructure has effectively been taken away, but they now end up in a position where they are far more overwhelmed. Because I think I've seen situations like that where you have people who are definitely need more access, they need help to get up from the trains to the platforms, or they just sort of need to know where they're going.

You can see that the person, or you have two people on the platform who are trying to help multiple people while also trying to navigate all these other people desperately just trying to get out. It's a really overwhelming and very stressful situation that even I imagine people who are decently trained will struggle with because part of this is also like how do you get all these kind of jobs to function using as few people as possible and paying them

as possible? I'll tell you the answer. And it's an app. Cool. And you end up saying you're absolutely spawned because not only does that mean that the environment and paying them as well. I'll tell you the answer. Absolutely. And it's an app. Cool. And you end up saying you're absolutely spawned because not only does that mean that the environment for those workers is going to be much less pleasant. I mean, partly because they're going to be out in the bloody weather.

And it's not as nice as being in a booking office where you can have a little heater next to you. But also flip down its head. If this government is going to make savings from this, because the building, the booking office is usually part of the station building, so are they just going to sell the station building to make that saving, probably, yes. Yeah, that's going to be more, you can buy pasties. Well, it's going to become the captain Tom Sorn Memorial Filia.

It's going to be a franchise. Think of women and travelers, girls, young women, whoever it is, the ticket office, the booking office is a safe space where they can go in the evening if they're traveling, they don't feel comfortable. This is not a nut to making this up. This is a common thing. We have women who don't feel safe, have somewhere safe that can go, that can go and stand near the booking office or be in the booking office, somewhere warm, safe, if they don't feel

comfortable. Instead, we're going to have the staff at the memorial thorn is going to be very warm. Yes, please go out. So it's just it's just exactly you're absolutely spot on. Has seen it goes both ways like this is there is a there is a key need for that asset that is clearly lost on on on to part of transport and treasury because they're just seeing the conditional formatting on their spreadsheets. I've taken this job on a railway. It's a fucking nightmare.

I'm trying to show this one woman where a ticket machine is. Trouble is for accessibility. They've also termined with giant bump. And I've got five blind women hanging onto me, like I'm the second coming to Christ. The thing it reminds me of too is that other great push for reform and heavy air quotes, drive-less trains, where you're like, we're going to make the railway all of it,

which has to interact with all the society. We're going to make the railway all of it, which has to interact with all the society, we're going to make it completely featureless and smooth, right? And there's never going to be anything that requires a human to do anything more than the most elementary sort of like reasoning involved. Everything's going to be within context and everything's going to be something that we can eventually automate, right? But even if like, by the logic they're if by the logic, I'm like trying to follow their logic as well. And you have one element which is this clearly the eradicating humans from public space

and by extension, getting rid of public space even as a concept. It's cruel and dehumanizing and awful. But then I also think to myself that like, they're also doing it in the dumbest way possible because they think that they can basically get it. I hate to bring Japan up again, but like lots of Japanese train stations are like this where like lots of things are very automated.

But like that's kind of designed efficiently. And even then, there are still like people like the train station guys are, they are like the ways station guys are, they are like the ways that they work are very much like shogun logic, right? But in Britain, you don't have that. And really what this is is like, we want to like do, we want to like get rid of as many people as possible and make these places kind of function without them so we don't have to pay them.

But we also don't really want to put the money in in order to do that. And so what we end up doing is making everything worse, like the trains get worse, the stations get worse, nothing. And again, this is very much just a projection of literally any type of service in the UK now, where the sort of arbitrary cost-gassing for both ideological reasons and also because we just don't really want to commit to doing anything. Just means that you're left with, yeah, things are shit, everything's really bad, get used to it, don't like it, like there's the door, but also the door doesn't work. It's still like jam shots, so don't like it, there's the emergency call if you keep

that key in the sauna. Yep. To pick up on that very briefly, again yeah, like if there's potentially an argument in some stations, particularly at suburban stations, not rural ones, but suburban stations, where you might say, well, actually, at certain times, maybe there is eventually a discussion about whether you have a permanently staffed booking office, but that conversation should only be happening after a massive fairs reform, because the ticketing system in the UK, as all of us know, is baffling. It's completely bonkers, totally opaque. And particularly

for anyone who's a casual user, and by the way, we want to bring, we want to double the number of passions on the railway by the middle of the next decade for climate change reasons. We have to do that. This is the opposite of going to help. It's going to do the opposite. And we're going to see that by doubling the capacity of the railway, right? Of course, yeah, that's a, oh, oh, oh, oh, no, no, no, no, no. What are we going to do? If everyone's laps, it's fine. If your parents driving you to an holiday,

you're like, just sit in the laps, fine. The rules of the sauna are again. It is that you're going to have to go through. What if the train characters' worver sauna? Oh, no. There's this. There's this. Every single coach is a cross section under the bottom part. There is a

little, anyway, yes, right? Look, the trains only go towards mech. I haven't helped you if you want to go to Bristol. That's not happening. There is another sort of element of this, right? That I think you've sort of touched on, which is in that Hussein has touched on as well, which is if you want to do this and still have the system work, it is possible, right? Let's just say for the sake of argument

that you keep someone who's like a roving, helpful person who is unionized and who is well trained, it is experienced and it does work. And you figure out how to like alert, you maybe they stand in a box, a little like taped off area most of the time. I don't know. You've got to very proud about this.

You bring station masters back, or whatever the fuck. Yeah, but what you have to do then is you have to retool every single ticket machine. You have to then rebuild, you don't have an app. Most people in Britain, when they buy a train ticket, they buy it through a private company that skims a little off the top.

One of the only ways to buy a train ticket in Britain without a private company skimming a little bit more off the top is at a fucking ticket office. Yeah, yeah. You would then have to build an app and it would have to be functional. It would have to build an app and it would have to be functional. It would have to be widely used and it would have to work very well and you would have to put all

of these ticket, these things on it. You'd have to be able to get a photo card somehow without going to a, without going to one of these office, there are so many problems to solve before you can do this. Just also as a side note, just before I go out and go out for it, I just remember the quite a funny story. I had to go to, I did like a festival, a few weeks ago and I had to go up to Bradford. And we had bought e-tickets using the e-ticket app from an e-go. From an e-go, yeah.

It was on the train. The only other ways you can actually buy a train ticket. The e-go. And in order to sort of get the sort of QR code that you needed to scan, you basically needed phone signal because obviously the trains that we were taking up didn't have Wi-Fi. That's another thing, but they're getting rid of Wi-Fi on the trains. It's great. It's great.

So try and touch the pile of things, Riley said. It needs to be good Wi-Fi on the train ticket. Oh my god. Watch your deep Wi-Fi for buy a train ticket. Where are you going? So the train ticket guy comes and obviously he's trying to scan our tickets and he's like, well look, we'd have bought tickets, but there's like no signal here. And so we can't show you them.

And he was like, you know, if you don't have a ticket, we have to find you. He was like, yeah, but we have bought the ticket. It's just there's no signal. Like, look. And he's like, yeah, but if you haven't got a ticket, you are going to have to pay. And it's going to cost you like, and when you show you the price, it's like, yeah, but if you haven't got a ticket, you are gonna have to pay and it's gonna cost you, and when you show you the price, it's like, yeah, are you like, there is no sick. So we had to wait for 20 minutes

until you got one bar of signal to show that we had bought this ticket. Stun real. And is this kind of like, well, actually, yes, so much of like moving everything to did these digital networks is also about making sure that all the digital coverage on mobile phones work. And that's something like, let's say I could be a separate question in and of itself,

but it is very much like, well, if you're going to digitize everything, then the digital infrastructure has to sort of be functional. And if your phone dies, do you get fined now? Yeah, literally yes. So this is exactly the same. And this has saying Riley Alice, all of the things, Alice, this, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, of investment. It requires investment infrastructure, but it's worth it. It didn't. What if we simply hoped for the best? I think a lot of the problem, and Britain, is that people are on-willing to simply hope for the best. People are saying the railway requires billions of pounds

of investment, but what if we just closed our eyes and just found the man who's been turned into a giant bump and hope that we got on the correct train and ended up in our destination? What if we believed enough that we ended up in a sauna, sucking on the penis of a royal Navy vessel? Well, I think, I think maybe Stomer could suggest that Britain embraces its its it's

Interamannic pixie dream girl and just gets on whatever train And sees reality takes you could end up in castering chest a little straight or Mac You could yeah, you could start you could start a new life and Kendall they close the ticket office at Mac that's the mechus, sake of the shit. Yeah. So. Right, this is shit. Oh, you got your Qalco that proves your Muslim. So they gave it to the Arshaq. Right, if you're not, I will have to be Egypt if I don't see it. I do love that in the sort of fantasy world you create, that guy is everywhere. Yeah, that's it.

It's the Essex man, he's it. It's the Essex man. It's like, they got... It's like I'd be touching a car, but without a ticket. He's a Joseph Campbell architect now, I think. But, you're circling the... This is the first glass car, but section. He's like a character actor from the 1950s, but cast in every role.

Yeah, I like that. I like... He's one of my favorite characters to hear from. So I want to go back to this idea of investment, right? Which is at some point, right, when you, what we've seen is that trains tend to fail, train companies tend to fail and find themselves forced nationalized by repeat government decree, forcing the train companies to, as you say, gamble on just pulling out random bits of the infrastructure so that you can save some money, right? At what point,

what happens when, let's say, for example, a train company gets sued into fucking oblivion because someone is unable to access a train or God forbid hurts themselves, right? And they're disabled. So there is precedent for this on a variety of levels. Firstly, these proposals are massively in breach of the equality act 2010. I'm not a lawyer, but the only reason that the only reason in hell that this won't see going to court is because no one will be able to afford to bring it to court, and there'll be no spacing course to see it. Because honestly, this is that the proposals are enormously discriminatory and enormously in breach of the A8, A2010. We know

that I know this because existing conditions are in breach of A8, A2010. There have been several legal cases about it. And painfully, people die as I've said before, possibly on this show, in fact, the most dangerous interface on our railway right now is people falling between the track, between the platform and the train, which most dangerous interface on our railway right now is people falling between the platform and the train, which is an interface that's an accessibility interface as a result of, you know, one of the things that the issue is not having enough staff around to deal with it or not investing in infrastructure to make sure that interface is minimized. So you have to make the roving guy, the way that you find him is that he has a speaker

on him playing the mind of the gap noise all the time. The gap. If you fail to mind the gap, we are not legally liable. Yeah. The thing is, it's right that that's what, I mean, that literally is what the mind, the gap should think it's for. But yeah, and we've seen cases where railway operators have had a metaphorical and literal ton of bricks fall on them in order to get, where they have to get new trains,

update platforms and stations to deal with the accessibility issue. We saw that with Mersey Rail after the fatality, about a decade ago. So there is precedent to this. These proposals are absolutely barking mad, not just from what they mean for what we want as a public transport system, but in terms of the hero now in terms of how much they are not workable. Are the government's proposals are for this to all as much of this to have happened by Christmas, which is baffling. The consultation

process is supposedly going to take two to three years, which obviously then kicks it through into the next government. But the government's hope is that a lot of this will have happened by Christmas. It's still a friend of World War I, isn't it, really? Yeah. I was about Christmas. I was about Christmas, don't worry about it. Well, is that general egg but bass? Yeah, that's right.

Oh, no, I'm going to buy a paper called me to butcher his son, but I've, oh, it makes a difference. Yeah. I want to go back to this, right, as well, this, this, what will happen, because we've seen what happens, which is that repeated governments create the conditions for the legs to get kicked out from under public utilities,

whether that's trains, water, power, et cetera, then they either fail, get bailed out, or get forced nationalized. And so, this just seems like a particularly fast and cruel swing of the acts. The government amokes this leninistic accelerationist, they just want to nationalize every company. They're destroying the economy from within.

Yeah, Mala, you said it's an episode or two ago. We now know through very useful experimental conditions, exactly what the failure cycle of water infrastructure is, and it's about 50 years, right? You know, we've done that experiment. I think Al is that way, but yes. But, and you know, this is, this is, I sort of saw this statistic in the papers today,

which is a record high 23.6% adults rate their anxiety the previous day from being asked as high, right? You wonder why that is? It's because of shit like this. Right, you gotta stop filling out these surveys. Because, yeah, we have more. An anxiety, Riley, a statistical outlier. It's you and me. It's literally, it's just you and me.

But I get it in the free and pod strategy every time I fill out the anxiety survey. I feel like another one, but I just keep getting blank. It's like a genuine sort of like breakdown and trust in an institution that needs to be like worthy of trust and confidence. If you're trying to get the train back, you need to know that you will not be left stranded in the middle of nowhere and the middle of the night. You don't know if you're going to be able to get a train to where you're going, even vaguely near the time it's promising you. You don't know if you're going to be able to get home or get to start a new life in

Kendall. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've been clattering with, with Quail is a castor. Yeah, so the issues, the issues. Surely me in the ticket office sauna. What's it? I've said I've got so many Quail is. I don't even know who Captain Tom is.

I ain't never is sucking my dick. Every time I go to London for a live show, I'm like, well, not even slightly, I'm terrified because I'm like, oh, am I going to get there in time? Am I going to get back in time? Am I going to have to make a new life for myself in catering or Kendall? I don't know, no one knows, and it's incredibly frustrating and frightening. I think I'm going to experience for a lot of disabled past, for many disabled pastures now, if you're in a wheelchair or, or, or, or, or, very, very sort of ways that you have to get around.

And that's the experience for most pastures in terms of they, they, they, they, hopefully when they're at, they're at a station, the chance they've had to phone ahead to check that someone's there, which, that's immediately, that's not independent travel. So they're phone ahead. If they're getting on the train, if they're getting on the train in London, say, or a big city, and they're getting off in a rural or a smaller station, they have no idea whether the person's gonna be at

that platform with a ramp when they get off, or they're just gonna have to take the train to end up in Kendall or Kettering. You know, this is the experience for everyone. And what we're doing is doing that, but everywhere now, because we're getting rid of the booking offices. The Elysium is the 10th everyone. And what we're doing is doing that, but everywhere now, because we're getting rid of the booking offices. The Ableism is the spread of the ultimate.

It's fantastic. And you know, this is perhaps for people could learn to do cool jumps in their wheelchairs. A small land, which I hope you're. And if you want to talk about, if you want to go back to that sort of anxiety statistic, I think it's no surprise that it's up. It's no surprise that it's up around more people

because you see. It's just to get to work. We just have no guarantee that you're gonna be able to. Because you see the, let's say, the things that you depend on to live are roading around you. And when you're more anxious, you tend to be more easily, let's say, alienated,

and you tend to be more able to fall into the beliefs and habits of an extremely alienated, anxious person. Yeah, plus all these vizagoths are gathering across the Rhine and a lot of them are speaking like late Latin, which is getting pretty concerning. Yeah, in Britain, you're like slowly being painted into a corner where you're just being yelled at by the government from different directions. It's like, don't get ill, there's no sick pay. Can I see a doctor? Of course you fucking can't! Don't drive! Don't drive into the town! You fucking bastard! You kill the planet! It's gonna cost you a million pounds! The roads are fucked! Don't fucking drive your car! It's the town you prick!

Can I get a train or bus of course you fucking car or something he's stupid questions fly there on an umbrella like Mary Poppins you stupid prick I want to talk a little bit about the health system now actually now that you've been disabled don't be get boy on it legs I don't know what to tell you. You can't get them on the NHS. Get Honda to rebuild you like the $6 million man. I hate to be, it can't be any better than this. Oh sorry, I'm overworked. I'm the one guy that runs Bryin. I've been giving no resources. How many months has it been had today?

Sorry, I've been months has it been had today. I've been a lot. Month does it. I've been a lot. Months does in my mind. Oh, I'm sorry. As I lose note. Oh, there's, we have a few more minutes and I want to talk actually about the health service and the Tony Blair global

Well Okay, Tony black global memorials We are only ever referring to it as the Tony blabble memorials on a global Plaza forever frightening scale of this sort as well Change you know, yeah, that about the change, you know. Yeah, well, that's the one that has sat I'm has saying at the bottom. Yeah.

So this is the Tony Blair global memorial sauna has published a new report on on the NHS and what they think it has to do in B. And you can see echoes of the train debacle, the great train debacle. Oh, yeah, and Ronny speech in the great train debacle. So I'm going to read some of the forward. It says, we have the technological and scientific means to transform health and care to safeguard the founding principles of beverage in Bevin. So we're not safeguarding service levels, just founding principles, which have nothing

to do with service level. We made, how about you respect the fundamental proof of this beverage? Are you fucking wet. You should swing the drink out of your hand and I'm probably breakfast. I, I, that's another one of my favorites. You don't do that one enough. I, yeah, I need you to sink that you fucking wet. I'm sorry.

Without fully embracing the tech revolution, Blair goes on, there is no future for the NHS. The post-war generation was liberated by the creation of the NHS and by the transit of property, of course, we will be... I'm just in the job to get that sentence, sorry, I just have a mic, because that sentence is just like, that is everything we've talked about, isn't it? Without fully embracing the tech revolution, there is no future for the square brackets. It's literally just copy and paste railways in there. It's just such a classic line.

And the tech revolution means not actually investing. It means remove. No future other than the sort of cock or Mamie bullshit one we've cooked up for you. Yeah, you've got to embrace the tech revolution. You're not embracing any solutions. It's just the actual idea of a revolution. You have to embrace that, which doesn't,

it doesn't bring anything, but you have to embrace that. No, you can't see a doctor with replacing with a computer That's it's not even a good computer. I'm sorry I it's all I've been given is an acorn from the 90s. It doesn't hurt now. She's an iPad, but look at old one Your mom is a fucking team mobile sidekick look there's nothing I can do I like the sort's sort of sort of apologetic. Yeah. But what you have to replace with like a one civil servant is like,

is he really far away? Like, have they put him really far away as well? He's just like, you know, sort of like, Warhammer 40k style moving dreadnaught sauna. He's locked in the ticket office. And they're for him. And they're for all summer sauna. And, he's locked in the ticket office. And they're also sauna. And they threw away the key, so he's in the sauna.

But he's incredibly stressed about it. Yeah, because he's sort of like, he's kind of like a sacrificial lamb. Like, he's the man who runs Britain, but Britain is so badly run due to all of the underlying conditions that we also hate him. So he kind of, he lives in a sort of bureaucratic loophole. Like at the bottom of a well, right? And his job, and part of his job is that he's the guy that everyone's supposed to get mad at for their various grievances. He's quasi-quango.

Anyway, anyway, what are you doing? I usually do on this level, but quasi-quango is substantially better. The hunchback civil servant. So the tech revolution you have to embrace is just faith in magic. It is to me, it is someone who is gambling and chasing losses, but using my money, essentially, and the kind of mad about it. Yeah, me too, it's annoying.

Just like, you try and get some of your money back from, and he's like, I'm on a's like, I'm on a hot streak. I'm on a hot streak. However, over the years, other realities have emerged and the NHS now requires fundamental reform or support for it will diminish. Other realities have emerged is such a like, join me in the brain, don't you? If the NHS cannot provide timely care, if the waiting lists are long seeing a GP is difficult, then people who can pay will pay. Tony, play, you fucking cut. What do you

mean if it already is that and you know it to that because you're a large part of the reason why it is that? That is why in the past five years, the number of people using private health providers have rocketed. That's actually something, I think we can come back to the train example. What that's going to say is, why not use private transport instead of a train? Why not drive more? Right? Mark Harper, who's the Secretary of State of Transport, has literally said this. He has said these words.

He has said, well, actually people drive. We're at the Department of Transport. We're not the Department of Trains. We should be more pro-car. It's like, oh, golly, oh, my, okay, okay. Have you seen the shape of our society? Have you seen how little people have ability? Have you seen the fact that contrary to popular opinion, like the bottom 20% of people that do not have access to, do not have the ready access to a car in the way that the middle class is doing? It's just,

it's head banging, sorry, really good. It means that in order to produce a public good, state authority, authority has to be used. People need to be compelled. So if you just enable people to do what they do according to their means, then everything falls fucking apart. Then you lose things like a train and then all of a sudden all the good things

that even car rotors enjoy from trains go away. All of the externalities that even the wealthy enjoy from the NHS go away. It's not saying that that's why you need it, but that's what the point of public goods is they require the exercise of authority. If people are using private healthcare, it doesn't mean that they prefer it. It means that the exercise of authority at an institutional and social level has diminished to the point where the public could no longer be maintained. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah care into the third decade of this century. Both are consequences of the technological revolution. The first is how people live today.

They operate choices. They operate digitally. They make choices continually and want to control their own lives rather than have others do it for them. Which again, says, they do not want to participate in a public good because we provided a public good that's bad on purpose. That's such thing as a society.

Yeah, it's there. And the second is that massive advances in life sciences is going to hugely accelerate over the coming years of the artificial intelligence revolution. Oh, fuck hell. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So we need, therefore, we need. We just feel like it was written by an AI Act.

So therefore, we need a health service that fundamentally changes the relationship between citizen and service, which is, No, we don't. Yeah, no, well, we don't, We do. It just needs to be good. It needs to be, we all hear and everyone listening knows that we do need to change the relationship between provider and service by doing things like eliminating the fact that they, that the arms length body relationship, for example, the population is 20% bigger and 20% older and we built no

new hospitals. But that's the problem. It's not rocket science. We're older, there are more of us. But we're more hospitals. Look, we had one factory and it could even build hospitals or old people. And we're just that old people. Look, I don't want to tell you. It's all we can do. The doctors are fucking iPad. I've already told you. Learn to use the iPad doctor. It can't look up your ass so it's an iPad. Just answer questions as best you can.

I'm not going to read you another paragraph. We should use digital technology to change the relationship between citizen and service. These person should have their own personal health account delivered through the NHS app. This will be owned by the patient and not the service, storing health data, including self-testing and self-diagnosis. This is such thing become available. It's just become your own doctor. Do your own surgery.

This is worse than getting, this is, wait a minute, I've forgotten, what's the sign that's currently outside the trash future of this? It's worse than the, it's worse than the, it's worse than the, yeah, yeah. It's worse than getting the plumber to become the dentist. It's like, this is now no, you're going to become the doctor. You're going to

be the dentist. Let me read you another part of this. We've removed the entire NHS budget and we've replaced it with a film to 12 man. You're going to be inspired by the story of an Norwegian commando amputated his own fingers from frostbite and learn to become your own say it's the best I could do well a lot of basic health services can actually be delivered through through pharmacies by employers or in gyms and supermarkets making them easier to access. Jesus Christ. So yeah what if your personal trainer was also performing a colonoscopy on you. While, well, while you're lifting, you're like squatting and he's just going to his face

under your arms. Looking at you with a fucking sextant. Yeah, so what Tony Blair, what the Tony Blair Institute for Global Sonna is promising, right? Is there saying what we need to do is, again, imagine a health service that is so smooth down that we don't have to accommodate people outside of our preferred context.

We don't have to imagine the complexity and locality that having a human-based, I fucking hate that I have to say human-based, actual public good gives you. Instead, we are going to operate a diminimus app-based service that is increasingly like, have you considered CBT and then everyone who can pay for have their employers pay your oligists. Yeah. Or have their employer pay for health insurance is then going to keep getting healthcare. In many ways, it seems like it's going to be worse than the American system.

Oh, no. Yeah, it's just like this is this is worse than some of the stuff that, Sajja Javid or everyone's favorite, Matt Hancock guy was saying, this is worse than, this is like more dismantlery than, it's just bad. I mean, it's table states. I know this is table states. I know this is just always his deal. I know that his flipping foundation has its tendrils horrifyingly into the current labor party, but it's just, it still doesn't make any less absolutely aggravating to hear it. If a fact, mind the fact that everyone is only able to talk about reform, and by reform, they mean the same thing as taking away the ticket offices.

They mean we are going to take a thing away and hope technology fills the gap meaningfully. And if not, who cares? Yeah, it's the same with the way we're talking. Climate change is the wizard will fix it. The wizard will fix it. Logic is the wizard will fix it. I was going to say the logic is that worth the technology fails. And it's not, the issue is not that like removing the human element to, and especially to things like care, arm was the problem. In the same way that we've talked about all the startups, they say, well, no, the technology will simply get better.

And so if the first version fails, then the second version will succeed. And the second version fails, and the third version will succeed. And therefore, and so technology as sort of like a concept is very much, well, I mean, the best way to put it is, it's the wizard. It's like ultimately, the wizard will solve the problem. Don't worry about it.

Yeah, the install list for the new NHS. The shiny runs on Windows 95. Yeah. So, look, I think that's probably a good enough place to leave it, right, which is that this is not just in the railways. It's just most visible in the railways now, but we can see shadows of that particular belief system

all over the place. But I just want to say, I'll get an end on pudding. I was hoping we're going to end on pudding. I was so excited about pudding. I think the NHS app stuff with Tony Blair was a little, you know what it was? It was like a salted chocolate.

Okay, that's all the rage. It's all the fucking modern rage. You tell you, you tell you a fucking pudding, You know what it was? It was like a salted chocolate Modern rage you take you take a fucking pudding and you make it salty It's always the same money You've not been paying attention the doctors are fucking iPad the train guard is an iPad with a little braille sticker on it It says mine the gap you put in the iPad you're a fucking iPad Everybody just relax you're all iPad just a you're what everyone's an iPad and we're all just chilling in the sauna Don't let your iPad get about 50 degrees I wanted to once again, thank you for making your billionth on this show. It's always a delight to have you on. Thank you. I'm very sweaty, much sweatier than I was at the start of the episode and I wasn't all doing all the shacking.

You've got the T.F. black card now. Yeah. It allows you to access like the special floors of the captain Tom Onsen. Yeah, yeah. Well, the T.F. enclosure at the captain Tom Onsen. You also get a special concierge service where we'll do favors for you. Good.

Yeah, that is exciting. You actually get to get sucked off by a World War II veteran. Yeah, and one of us will do your dental work for you. Yeah, not fun. Fun cluster, yeah. Yeah, I know. It's so much always such a pleasure to join you all. And you get this trash-shoot-to-branded iPad,

which is also your doctor. I'd also like to remind everyone, please to check out Railnatter on YouTube. We'll link it in the comments. Uh, uh, link in the comments. Not the show description. And also that we have a live show. Just know to read it. We have a live show.

Yeah, the 26th of July in London. But where the 26th of July between the bridges. Do not be aware of it. Well, be aware of it You should be aware of it and attend the trashy July show There is a discount code for $10 patrons. It is on the patreon This show is over half sold so do get buying those ticket You sort of went into you went into Peter Cook a little bit there

Peter Cook, oh, it's sort of went into, you went into Peter Cook a little bit there. Peter Cook, it's sort of a naughty. Yes, that's right. And if you're looking to see me do stand up comedy anywhere, I'll be there to be fringe. I could be doing a show in London on the 18th of July. Tickets for that. All of my reps. So come see us.

Come see us at fringe. My life. Whenever those tickets get sold. Yeah, fourth of August, keep it free. I'm gonna chase them again now. And let's see. Yeah, don't twitch stream. It's from 9 to 11. If you wanted to hear us talk about that Liz Jones article where she was really that was like premium stream content. The stream is getting properly good. Check into slop.

Delivery in your browser. Does that work? Does that work? Yes, it works. It works. Okay. Good. So, yeah, that is one of the recent vods.

Maybe we'll rename it or something, but if you want to see us talk about that article, that's where to go for it. Other than that, I think we'll just say, see you in a few short days on the bonus. Bye, everyone. Bye, Bye. Bye. you